Tactics
by Kryal
Summary: A very short story - scene really - exploring stress, reactions to it, and the tactical acumen of people who try to fight armies single-handedly. Based loosely on a scene in a trailer for Kingdom Hearts II.


_All right, a brief note: this is based on the trailer for Kingdom Hearts II – in particular, the scene where Sora and company are charging headlong at an army of Heartless. I am assuming that he has met with Riku, and that the lot of them are sitting back enjoying some much-needed down-time._

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TACTICS  
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Sora laughed. "That's the power of the Keyblade!" he crowed, plunking his feet down on top of the table and leaning back in his chair.

Riku had a look of deep concentration about him. Then it was like a light-bulb clicked on; his face brightened slightly, and he smacked a fist into his open hand in a classic 'I've got it!' gesture. "Sora," he said, "I just remembered. I need to talk to you about something. Do you mind?"

Sora let his feet return to the floor as he sat up straight again, anxious. "Of course not! What is… OW!"

The last comment was because Riku, who had risen and moved to stand behind the younger boy's chair, had reached down, grabbed his ear, and used that handle to bodily pull Sora up to a standing position, so that they were practically nose-to-nose. This was not discounting the height difference, which meant that Sora was on his tip-toes and not very happy about the situation.

"OWWW! Hey, let go!" Sora scrabbled at Riku's arm, but it had about as much effect as pounding on solid rock. And while he was pleased, in an odd way, that Riku was still stronger than he was – the older boy's deceptive slimness had been worrying – apparently Riku was still not above using said strength to its full and highly unfair advantage. "Riku, what's gotten into you?" he wailed.

"Funny," Riku said pleasantly, in a perfectly conversational tone. "That's what I was going to ask. I seem to remember seeing a certain friend of mine charge headlong, with only two allies, into an advancing army of Heartless."

Sora paused his struggling, nonplussed. "You're mad about _that_? But…"

"But then I thought," Riku continued, in that same nonchalant tone. There was a edged glint in his eyes sharp enough to use as a razor. "… 'Surely I'm imagining things.' After all, my best friend couldn't _possibly_ be doing something so blatantly idiotic as to be flat-out suicidal, not when we'd _just_ found each other after an entire year of worry and separation. And _certainly_ he knew better than to get himself killed and leave it to _me_ to explain to said best friend's long-suffering, terribly concerned girlfriend just _why_ I let him do something like that."

Leave it to Riku to use every weapon he had available to make a brutal point. Up to and including massive guilt-trips. "Look, I didn't have a choice…!"

"Mm-hmm. And _why_, perchance, were you out there in the first place? And why, again perchance, did you not run like hell and get your tail out of there _before_ you were surrounded by a blood-thirsty, Keyblade-maddened army of Heartless?"

'_The Keyblade_!' Sora mentally jumped on the opening, because he didn't _really_ like the picture Riku was painting. It sounded a lot less heroic and a _hell_ of a lot more patently idiotic when described like that. "But I'm the Keyblade Bearer!" he protested. "I had to fight!"

"Reeeaaally? I wasn't aware that Keyblades had built-in berserker tendencies." Riku pulled him up a little higher. "In addition, _as the Keyblade Bearer_, you are under an obligation to keep yourself _alive_." He smirked and added flippantly, "Particularly since the only person who can take up the role if you get yourself killed is _me_, and I _really_ don't want to deal with it."

More guilt-trip. Riku was really disturbingly good at this. And Sora's ear was going numb, but the areas attached hurt like crazy, so it wasn't much of a relief.

"Furthermore," Riku said, and he was back to the liltingly reasonable, conversational tone of voice. "While I'm aware that, as a hero, you have the whole '_his strength is as the strength of ten, because his heart is pure_' advantage, you need to bear in mind that the Heartless have the '_their strength is as the strength of several bazillion, because that's how many of them there are_' advantage. It rather overbalances yours by a quite respectable amount."

Sora was embarrassed to feel tears at the corners of his eyes. And it wasn't even because of the mockery or the unrelenting pull on his poor abused ear. Even when they'd been little, Riku had always made sure that the important lessons of _reality_ (which Riku sometimes seemed to have been born with a Master's Degree in) stuck with the younger boy – to the point, if necessary, of driving it in with a sledgehammer. (Kairi's transformation of their duo into a trio had not helped. The girl usually sided with Riku when it came to lessons in life – or was the recipient of the blunt lessons right alongside Sora.) It was because he could hear the disappointment in Riku's voice and see it in his friend's shadowed eyes, and he also knew that the _reason_ Riku was acting like this was because the older boy had been scared sick for him.

"It worked out in the end, didn't it?" he cried, starting to thrash again.

Unexpectedly, Riku released him. Sora didn't drop, exactly, because his feet had been on the ground (or at least his toes had) the entire time. But he wasn't able to keep from staggering back against the table while rubbing at his ear.

"You're right," the older boy said. "You managed to stay alive, amazingly. Which is why I'm just informing you, rather than killing you personally."

Sora ignored the slight logical incongruity – if he hadn't managed to stay alive, then he'd be dead, and it was hard to personally kill someone who was already dead. Then again, one should never underestimate a distraught and seriously pissed off Riku.

"…That's it, then?" he asked in surprise. He couldn't believe Riku was letting him off with hanging him by his ear and a semi-lecture.

Then again…

It was about the time that he noticed the decidedly _vicious_ gleam in Riku's eyes overlaying the disappointment, relief and residual fright that his brain politely tapped him on the back of the shoulder and pointed to his previous thought: never underestimate a distraught and seriously pissed off Riku.

"Not at all," Riku said coolly, but with hard amusement pulling his mouth into an almost cruel smirk. "I just thought I'd let Kairi deal with the rest of it. Because rest assured that she _is_ going to hear about this."

…Sora could see the Pearly Gates already.

Funny, they seemed to be enjoying his impending doom, too.

As Riku turned and strode out of the room, probably looking for a safe release for what was left of his residual pent-up anxiety, Sora collapsed back into his chair and buried his head in his hands.

'_…Of all the times for Riku's vindictive streak to come back with a vengeance…!_'

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_A.N. ::laughs and scratches the back of her neck sheepishly:: I really am going to do a serious one… eventually… honest! Besides, this is sort-of semi-serious…_

_ Riku has a sort of world-wise air to him in the game. Not that he's truly knowledgeable or experienced, but my impression was that he had a much firmer grip on the realities of things around him than the other two. I really can, in a way, see him imparting a bit of that wisdom to his friends – forcefully, so that he knows it will stick._

_ And I can _definitely_ see him having a vindictive streak._

_ The scene with Sora charging headlong into an army of Heartless with Donald and Goofy right beside him is very dramatic, very thrilling, and very stupefying – as in, I kept scratching my head and thinking, '_Um, what exactly is this going to accomplish?_' While I realize that technically he was surrounded, I kept wondering how exactly he ended up in that situation in the first place. Well, I never did get an answer to that. But then, as I was reading a rather biting commentary on the strategy and tactics – or rather, lack there-of – evidenced in the movie of _The Two Towers_, Riku popped into my head giving Sora a scathing dress-down regarding his actions and… well, you see the result above._

_ Comment and critique as you see fit, and thank you._

_ I really, _really_ will get a __non-humor__Kingdom__ Hearts story posted… someday…_


End file.
